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🇵🇹Portuguese Source WordCode: PT

quiasmo

Pronunciation / Transliteration: kiˈazmu

🇬🇧 Direct English Meaning:
Chiasm/ˈkaɪ.æz.əm/
nounCEFR C2 (Proficient)Top #45200 frequency
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🇵🇹 Example Sentence in Portuguese:

"O quiasmo é uma figura de linguagem baseada na inversão."

Comprehensive Definitions & Senses

2 senses
As noun
  1. 1

    A grammatical figure of speech wherein the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second.

    "The famous phrase 'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country' is a brilliant example of a chiasm."
  2. 2

    An anatomical crossing or intersection of two tracts, nerves, or structures, such as the optic chiasm.

    "Visual signals from the eyes cross over at the optic chiasm before reaching the brain's visual cortex."
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Thesaurus & Semantic Spectrum

Antonyms & Contrasting Words (1)

Linguistic Origin & Historical Etymology

Derived from the Greek word 'khiasmos', meaning 'marking with an X', which comes from 'khiazein' meaning 'to shape like the letter chi (X)'. The term entered English in the 19th century through rhetorical and anatomical contexts, describing structures or concepts arranged in a crisscross pattern.

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